Surrounded by classmates, all looking for work, Gerald Atlas, 19, (rt) waits for a Rubicon representative to distribute free bus passes after completing a job skills workshop at Rubicon's Opportunity Center where he has been taking a crash course in finding a job on Wednesday Sept. 21, 2011 in Richmond, Calif. Atlas has been looking for a job for the past 8 months since moving here from Las Angeles. He said its a been a really frustrating process. Most of the jobs he has applied for are filled within the first day.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Surrounded by classmates, all looking for work, Gerald Atlas, 19,...

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Gerald Atlas, 19, hangs out at home after finishing a day of career training at Rubicon's Opportunity Center where he has been taking a crash course in finding a job on Wednesday Sept. 21, 2011 in Richmond, Calif. Atlas has been looking for a job for the past 8 months since moving here from Las Angeles. He said its a been a really frustrating process. Most of the jobs he has applied for are filled within the first day.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Gerald Atlas, 19, hangs out at home after finishing a day of career...

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Dennis Lindsey goes over his resume with Yvonne Mau, a career coach at Rubicon's Opportunity Center where he has been taking a crash course in finding a job on Wednesday Sept. 21, 2011 in Richmond, Calif.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Dennis Lindsey goes over his resume with Yvonne Mau, a career coach...

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Gerald Atlas, 19, watches his cousin Makhi Ronbinson, 10 months at home after finishing a day of career training at Rubicon's Opportunity Center where he has been taking a crash course in finding a job on Wednesday Sept. 21, 2011 in Richmond, Calif. Atlas has been looking for a job for the past 8 months since moving here from Las Angeles. He said its a been a really frustrating process. Most of the jobs he has applied for are filled within the first day.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Gerald Atlas, 19, watches his cousin Makhi Ronbinson, 10 months at...

Image 5 of 5

Gerald Atlas, 19, hangs out at home after finishing a day of career training at Rubicon's Opportunity Center where he has been taking a crash course in finding a job on Wednesday Sept. 21, 2011 in Richmond, Calif. Atlas has been looking for a job for the past 8 months since moving here from Las Angeles. He said its a been a really frustrating process. Most of the jobs he has applied for are filled within the first day.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Gerald Atlas, 19, hangs out at home after finishing a day of career...

More grim economic news rolled out of the U.S. Census Bureau on Wednesday, but amid the numbers showing rising local poverty rates and a sinking California household income came one sliver of cheer for the Bay Area.

This region didn't suffer as much as the rest of the state. Or even the nation as a whole.

California's median household income plunged 6 percent to $57,708 between 2006, before the recession and housing implosion hit, and last year, according to the Census Bureau. Throughout the United States, the income figure fell 4.4 percent.

However, none of the core Bay Area counties did as badly as the rest of California. In fact, household income actually rose 1.5 percent in San Francisco and 4.6 percent in Contra Costa County.

The key measurement dipped modestly in Alameda and San Mateo counties. Surprisingly, given that it is one of the richest counties in the United States, Marin County experienced the sharpest income drop in the central Bay Area, 5.5 percent.

Granted, that still left Marin's median household income at $83,867, well above the state and national figures. But the dollars were still going the wrong way - and that is the typical direction right now, experts said.

Worse for some

"The pain is not evenly spread at all," said Sarah Burd-Sharps, co-author of the book "A Portrait of California," a demographic examination of the state. "Certain groups are really struggling."

She blames a lot of the income trouble in California on what she called its "bare-bones" education system, which has been taking a financial lashing in recent years.

"We have found that income has a lot to do with education," she said. "The more you have, the less likely you are to be unemployed."

Burd-Sharps said 19 percent of adults in California have no high school diploma, compared with 15 percent throughout the country. "California is way behind," she said.

At the official end of the recession in late 2009, the national unemployment rate for those with no high school degree was 35 percent.

Poverty rate

The poverty rate, revealed by the census last week to be 15.8 percent in California, hasn't hit that rate yet in the core Bay Area counties, according to the more detailed 2010 American Community Survey issued Wednesday night.

The percentage of people living below the poverty line was highest in Alameda County, where it rose to 13.5 percent from 11.2 percent in 2006. The rate also went up, slightly, in the other counties, except for one - San Mateo County, where it fell to 6.8 percent from 2006's 7.4 percent.

Even more telling was the new census report's "Gini Index," a measurement of how equally income is distributed.

It showed that the split between rich and poor stayed about the same between 2009 and 2010 throughout the nation, but widened in California. This state now has a bigger spread between high and low incomes than 42 other states.

Local problems

Drilling down to the city level showed a hodgepodge of local successes and failures.

Median household income plunged 12.8 percent in Richmond from 2006 to 2010, and 7.9 percent in Fremont. But in Oakland, the measurement actually rose by 0.3 percent.

"We need to attack the problem of unemployment and lower income at all levels, because obviously the federal government is having its own challenges coming up with solutions," said Jane Fischberg, executive director of Rubicon Programs, which runs job-training centers throughout the Bay Area. One such center, the Financial Opportunity Center in Richmond, opened in April and has had to turn away as many people as it takes in.

"It's tough," said 19-year-old Gerald Atlas of San Pablo, one of the center's students. "There are jobs opening up for the holidays in sales and delivery, but they fill in so fast that they might say they have eight openings one morning, but they're all filled 20 minutes later.